Hey California, New York Is Coming For Your Greentech

By God, Mayor Bloomberg will not have you wasting energy.

Greentech is so firmly associated with the West Coast, we’re not even going to bother with the jokes about hippies and solar panels. But if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has anything to say about it, that’s not going to stay the case. Today the mayor presided over the opening of energy-efficiency software company Efficiency 2.0’s snazzy new Flatiron offices (in the same building as Tumblr, no less), where he made it clear that New York City’s tech scene will not be ignoring the cleantech market, thank you very much.

Mayor Bloomberg led with an update on the city’s environmental efforts–they’ve tripled their solar power production by installing new panels on 10 buildings, for those keeping score at home–and announced that this summer the city will be holding its first green hackathon, dubbed “Reinvent Green.” (He also devoted rather a lot of time to a discussion regarding the virtues of white roofs.)

But before ceding the podium, he also took some time to trumpet his own administration’s support of the startup community. Via the city’s livestream:

We are hearing success stories like this across our tech industry citywide. Just two weeks ago I visited the city’s first tech incubator on Varick Street, where 22 companies have graduated and today employ more than 300 people. Our administration helped foster their growth and is taking the next steps to ensure New Yorkers have the skills to fill the jobs our blooming tech center is creating. And with the new applied sciences campus being built by Cornell University and the Technion Institute of Technology, there will be more and more innovative tech startups coming to New York City.

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